5 daily readings · Kent Keller

Greater Than Our Suffering - Colossians 1:24-2:5

Colossians 1:24-2:5

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday

Monday · Monday, July 27, 2026

A Why That Can Carry a What

"Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church,"

Colossians 1:24 · ESV

Paul is in prison, and he uses the word *rejoice.* Not *endure.* Not *accept.* Rejoice. And then he says something that has puzzled readers for two thousand years — that he is "filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions." He is not saying the cross came up short. Kent was careful about this on Sunday, and it's worth being careful about: *Jesus' suffering accomplished our salvation, period.* Nothing was missing from it. What Paul is filling up is not the payment for sin — it's the cost of getting the news to people who haven't heard it. Somebody has to carry it. Carrying it costs something. Viktor Frankl survived Auschwitz and came out with a sentence that has outlived him: a person can endure almost any *what* as long as they have a *why.* Paul had a why. His chains were the reason the letters got written — the letters you are reading right now. Most of us will never suffer for the name of Jesus the way our brothers and sisters elsewhere in the world do this morning. But all of us suffer. The question this passage puts to you is not whether your pain is meaningful in the abstract. It's narrower and harder than that: *is there anything God could do with this if I let him?* You may not get to choose the what. You do get some say in the why.

Reflect

What are you carrying right now that you've been trying to get out from under, rather than asking what God might do through it?

Pray

Father, I would not have chosen this. Show me what you are doing with it, and give me a why big enough to carry the what.

Romans 15 is the same Paul on the same errand — describing his ministry to the Gentiles as priestly service, ambitious to preach where Christ has not yet been named. The suffering in Colossians 1:24 is what that ambition cost him.

Read Romans 15

Tuesday · Tuesday, July 28, 2026

The Secret God Could Not Keep

"the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory."

Colossians 1:26-27 · ESV

For most of human history, this was a secret. Not a puzzle to be solved by the clever — a *mystery*, in the New Testament sense: something no amount of searching could have uncovered, because it had to be told. Hidden for ages and generations, Paul says. And then God told it. Here is the astonishing part. When God finally reveals the thing he kept back through all those centuries, it isn't a doctrine. It isn't a system. It's four words. *Christ in you.* Not Christ above you, keeping score. Not Christ behind you, disappointed. Not Christ ahead of you, waiting to see whether you'll make it. In you. The same Jesus who walked out of the tomb has taken up residence in ordinary people who lose their tempers and forget to pray and wonder most days whether any of it is working. And that indwelling is called *the hope of glory* — not the hope that things will improve, but the settled certainty that what God started in you he intends to finish. If you are in a hard season, this is the sentence to hold: the hope isn't out there somewhere, waiting for your circumstances to cooperate. It's already inside you. It has a name.

Reflect

Where have you been looking for hope outside yourself this week — and what changes if the hope is already within you, in the person of Christ?

Pray

Jesus, thank you that you did not stay at a distance. You made your home in me. Let that be the truest thing I know today.

Paul closes Romans with almost the same words he wrote to Colossae — the mystery "kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed." Two letters, one wonder he never got over.

Read Romans 16

Wednesday · Wednesday, July 29, 2026

Just Come

"Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ."

Colossians 1:28 · ESV

*Him* we proclaim. Not *it.* Not a better set of values, not a healthier way to live, not a moral framework that produces good citizens — though following Jesus does tend to produce those things. The message of the church has always been a Person. Kent told a story on Sunday about inviting a friend to his daughter's baptism. She had likely never been inside a church service in her life, and her first reaction wasn't joy — it was panic. *What do I wear? What should I bring? Should I bring something?* His answer: relax. You don't need to bring anything. We don't care what you wear. Just come. That, he said, is the gospel. It doesn't matter what you're wearing. You don't bring anything. Just come. We get this backwards constantly. We assume there's a threshold — a level of cleaned-up-ness, a minimum understanding, a debt to pay down first. And every time we assume it, we quietly turn the gospel back into the one thing it has never been: a system with an entry fee. There is no fee. There is a Person, and an open door, and an invitation with your name on it.

Reflect

Who in your life is standing outside the door asking "what do I bring?" — and when will you tell them they don't need to bring anything?

Pray

Lord, keep my message simple. Not a system, not a standard — you. Help me hold the door open for someone this week.

"We preach Christ crucified" — 1 Corinthians 1 is Paul making the same refusal to dress the message up as anything other than a Person.

Read 1 Corinthians 1

Thursday · Thursday, July 30, 2026

Where the Treasure Is Buried

"that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."

Colossians 2:2-3 · ESV

Paul is writing to people he has never met. He says so a verse earlier — the Colossians, the Laodiceans, and "all who have not seen me face to face." He is struggling on behalf of strangers. And what he wants for them is oddly specific: encouraged hearts, knit together in love, and full assurance of understanding. Notice he does not separate those. In Paul's mind you don't get the understanding alone, off in a corner with a book. Hearts get encouraged *as* they are knit together. The knowing happens in the company of others. Kent said something on Sunday that lands here: there are insights you only get while you're on the path. You can't get them online. You can't get them from a lecture or a podcast. Some things are only learned in the walking. And where does the walking lead? To Christ, "in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." Every treasure. Not some, with the rest scattered across other philosophies and teachers. All of them, in him. Which means the search for wisdom is not a search for a *what* at all. It has always been a search for a Who — and he has already come looking for you.

Reflect

Are you trying to grow in Christ mostly alone? What would it take to be genuinely knit together with a few others this fall?

Pray

Father, I want the treasure. Keep me from looking for it anywhere but in Christ, and give me people to walk with while I look.

"We impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages" — 1 Corinthians 2 says plainly what Colossians 2:3 assumes: the treasures were always in him.

Read 1 Corinthians 2

Friday · Friday, July 31, 2026

The Long Work of Being Made Complete

"For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me."

Colossians 1:29 · ESV

Paul has just said the goal: to present everyone mature in Christ. Now he tells us what reaching that goal actually feels like from the inside. *Toil.* *Struggling.* These are not gentle words. The Greek behind "struggling" is where we get *agonize.* This is not a man coasting. And yet — "with all his energy that he powerfully works within me." The effort is real and it is not self-generated. Paul is working hard with strength that isn't his own. Both halves are true at once, and most of us collapse one into the other. Either we grit our teeth and call it faithfulness, or we go slack and call it grace. Kent said Sunday that verses 28 and 29 have been his compass for decades — the words that told him which way was true north when everything else was noise. Here's what a compass does: it doesn't move you. It tells you which way you're facing. You still have to walk. So as this week ends, ask the compass question rather than the performance question. Not *did I do enough?* — but *was I facing the right direction?* Maturity in Christ is not a finish line you cross. It's a heading you hold, day after ordinary day, with strength he keeps supplying.

Reflect

Looking back over this week: which direction were you actually facing? What is one small course correction for the week ahead?

Pray

Lord, I don't want to drift. Be my true north. Give me your energy for the work you've given me, and steady my heading.

"I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth." The same partnership Colossians 1:29 describes — real labour, God's power, his increase.

Read 1 Corinthians 3

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